By your content I’m going to discuss regional, not local service. For context I’m in one of the top 10 most populous cities in the country. There is no regional rail service. That’s how bad it is. In order to catch a train, it’s a 2 hour drive to a much smaller city.

But let’s look at a train trip I wanted to take. All west coast, Portland, OR to San Diego, CA. There is at least rail service that would do it. I think it took 48 ish hours with a middle of the night layover in Los Angeles. The drive is about 16 hours. The flight is about 2.

When it exists, it’s slow and super inconvenient.

Someone stole your purchase, police should never call that a civil matter. Cops aren’t going to help anyway, but without the police report neither is BB, DD and ultimately your bank because the lack of getting police involved makes it look like you are committing fraud. Get the police report and get it to your bank before the back concludes their investigation because it’s harder to reopen one once it’s closed.

If you don’t take AZ and NV with you, you will get your Colorado River water cut off and lose a lot of farming power. That might even require UT. Unless it’s only Northern California included, in which case you still lose that agriculture, and possible land based trade lines to Mexico. It’s not a clean and pretty separation.

Walmart has Spark which is a delivery network they control that’s similar to door dash but AFAIK doesn’t require any logos on the vehicles.

When I worked for a bank call center the first question before initiating the dispute/chargeback process is “did you attempt to resolve this with the merchant first?” It is a requirement for doing the dispute. OP needs to clearly say yes, and they prevent it by not letting me speak to a human.

OP should also file a police report immediately. They won’t care, but at least the store can’t accuse OP of not following properof procedures.

I could have been that neighbor. For many years I was a WiFi communist and intentionally kept my AP open. I depended on free WiFi to get through college so I provided free WiFi. Then I got a cease and desist from my ISP for someone pirating a shit ton of porn. Like the list was about 10 full length pornos. Had to lock it down after that. I’ve considered making some deals with my neighbors to extend my mesh network into their house in exchange for space in their driveway, but haven’t gotten around to it.